Thank you!

Well, this showed up in today’s paper, essentially intact (only the “Sincerely” at the very end was redacted). Interesting that someone went to such lengths to add a few commas here and there, and change the capitalization of this or that word, while at the same time other letter-writers were allowed to perpetuate patently false red-meat rumors about President Obama and a certain female candidate likely to become our next president. Rumors that have been consistently debunked ever since they first appeared. Let’s hope the editor is airing such stupidity to allow the same, too-frequent writers to euphemistically hang themselves.

– Monsieur Jacques d’Nalgar, Dimanche, Octobre 23, 2016 CE

PS – A slightly different (and a bit improved, in my opinion) version of this appeared in today’s issue of the Arkansas Times (Thursday, October 27, 2016) weekly. You can read the version submitted in the comment section below. Again, there were a few edits and my sincere “Sincerely” farewell was disappeared. (Monsieur d’Nalgar, Jeudi, Octobre 27, 2016 CE)

Dear editor,

We the People are about to roll the dice and elect our next president. Just enough time left to dash off a few well-deserved thank you notes…

So first of all, a great big thank you to our ever-vigilant tea parties, and to their patron saints the Brothers Koch, for breathing new life into the smoldering ashes of daddy’s John Birch Society. Good old-fashioned, flag-waving, bible-thumping, patriotic paranoia never goes out of style.

And a special thanks to our very own, intrepid letter writers – les enfants très terribles – who every few days confess all that moulders in their inky souls. Their hatred of the black man in the White House, their love of Fox News and fake web sites, and their fixation on some dead guy named Saul Alinsky. Their heroes are legion, demigods of the email underworld, supermen like Dinesh D’Souza and David Barton and Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham. Always pro-life and yet always eager for more smiting. Always peddling an improbable, mythical American History to beguiled folk along the desperate fringes of reality.

Thank you Republican Party for your three-ring political circus that gave us blow-dried, blowhard, scary-clown Donald J. Trump. He almost makes us miss George Bush and his bloody wars and blown-up economies. Almost.

Thank you religious zealots, for showing us your real family values. If you ever held dear the radical example of your long-ago messiah, you’ve clearly left it all behind for a last-stand mess of Machiavellian pottage, a devil’s deal to somehow save the Supreme Court from godless Liberals. We marvel at your mountain-moving faith in a madman who promises to build a beautiful wall that others will pay for, banish dusky strangers from this fair-skinned land, and bring us into a millennium of it-will-be-so-fantastic gospel prosperity.

Thank you Mr. Trump, for making us believe again in the magic of hair spray.

Thank you America, for scaring the bejeezus out of every sentient being on our fragile planet. The world waits and wonders – and trembles – that we could even remotely consider this preening, predatory trumpery of a little man.

And finally, a brief apology to our neighbors in Canada and Mexico. We’re really, really sorry.

1 comment

Here’s the version that was submitted to the Arkansas Times earlier this week, and was included in the issue that came out today, Thursday, October 27, 2016:

Dear editor,

In less than two weeks, We the People are about to roll the dice and elect our next president. Just enough time left to dash off a few well-deserved thank you notes…

So first of all, a great big thank you to our Arkansas watchdog tea parties, and to their patron saints the Koch brothers, for birthing them out of the smoldering ashes of daddy’s John Birch Society. Good to know that old-fashioned, flag-waving, bible-thumping, patriotic paranoia never goes out of style.

And a special thanks for the right wing’s frenzied letters and blogs and banners that openly confess all that moulders in their inky souls. Their hatred of the black man in the White House, their love of Fox News and fake web sites, and their fixation on some dead guy named Saul Alinsky. Their heroes are legion, demigods of the email underworld, supermen like Dinesh D’Souza and David Barton and Robert Jeffress and Billy’s boy, the very, very reverend Franklin Graham. Always pro-life and yet always eager for more kill-them-all smiting. Always peddling an improbable myth of American exceptionalism to beguiled folk along the desperate fringes of reality.

Thank you Republican Party for your three-ring political circus that gave us blow-dried, blowhard, scary-clown Donald J. Trump. He almost makes us miss George Bush and his bloody wars and blown-up economies. Almost.

Thank you religious zealots, for showing us your real family values. If you ever held dear the radical example of your long-ago messiah, you’ve clearly left it all behind for a last-stand mess of Machiavellian pottage, a devil’s deal to somehow save the Supreme Court from godless Liberals. We marvel at your mountain-moving faith in a madman who promises to build a beautiful wall that others will pay for, banish dusky strangers from this fair-skinned land, and bring us into a millennium of it-will-be-so-fantastic gospel prosperity.

Thank you Mr. Trump, for making us believe again in the magic of hair spray.

Thank you America, for scaring the bejeezus out of every sentient being on our fragile planet. The world waits and wonders – and trembles – that we could even remotely consider this preening, predatory trumpery of a little man.

And finally, a brief apology to our neighbors in Canada and Mexico. We’re really, really sorry.

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